"Remarkable, Unspeakable New York "

From Old New York to the Harlem Renaissance, the Algonquin Round Table to the New York Intellectuals, the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth, Remarkable, Unspeakable New York offers a sweeping new view of New York’s place in the American literary imagination. James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, E. L. Doctorow, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Oscar Hijuelos, Langston Hughes, Washington Irving, Henry James, Toni Morrison, Dorothy Parker, Edith Wharton, Walt Whitman, and Tom Wolfe are among the many writers whose literary legacies are brought to life.

“Remarkable, Unspeakable New York is as lively and exciting as the city which is its focus. Shaun O’Connell clearly demonstrates that the nation’s metropolis, as setting and character, has inspired the greatest achievements of many American writers.” —Kenneth T. Jackson, editor-in-chief, The Encyclopedia of New York City

“O’Connell’s literary history of New York is informative and readable, written with affection and a poetic flair. . . . Highly recommended.” —S. I. Bellman, Choice

“There is scarcely a sentence here without its critical discernments. . . . Shaun O’Connell’s New York is sometimes a place of possibility, . . . sometimes the City of Destruction, but remarkable or unspeakable, always readable.” —Robert Taylor, The Boston Globe